“It doesn’t seem like anybody in the city was minding the store,” said Liu. “It really speaks to the need for contract reform, especially with outside consultants.”

“It appears to be a story of failure to actually provide the kind of management guidance and oversight that a huge project of this sort needs,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, told WCBS 880 reporter Paul Murnane on Wednesday. “Real management skill is picking wich are the appropriate instances where independent contractors should be used.”

She supports City Council efforts to rein in the use of outside companies.

“There has to be a cost/benefit analysis,” she said.

Part of the new 911 system is already up and running and the city, for its part, says the audit validates decisions that were made on issues that were clear long ago.